This Barbacoa Recipe is made in the slow cooker or Instant Pot for easy and flavorful shredded beef that can be served in tacos, salads, burritos and more! (gluten free, low carb, paleo)
I’m always ready for some barbacoa tacos! Over here in my little neck of the woods, I’m already getting ready for Cinco de Mayo (check out my list of The Best Cinco de Mayo recipes)! This year, I plan on celebrating with lot and lots of tacos, including some filled with this barbacoa beef.
Seasoned with smokey chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, lots of garlic and onions, and classic Mexican flavors like cumin and oregano, this shredded beef is rich, tender and juicy.
What is barbacoa?
Barbacoa is slow cooked beef that’s cooked over an open fire or in a hole that’s been dug in the ground and covered with the leaves of the maguey plant. In the US (or at least in the southern region of the country like Texas and Oklahoma where I grew up), barbacoa is made with beef tongue and beef cheek meat.
Today, I’m modernizing the recipe a little by using a chuck roast which is commonly found in most grocery stores. It’s the perfect cut of meat for slow cooking and get’s tender and rich, which is just what we want in a good barbacoa beef! Plus, if I’m being completely honest, beef tongue and cheek kind of gross me out, so while this recipe isn’t 100 percent authentic, it is inspired by my Mexican roots.
Ingredients in Barbacoa
The list of spices used to make this succulent barbacoa recipe is short. Aside from the regular salt, black pepper, garlic and onions that most slow cooked meat recipes call for, I included:
Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce – adds smokey rich flavor that soaks into the meat without being too overpowering. Feel free to adjust the amount used in the recipe depending on your heat tolerance.
Cumin and oregano – traditional Mexican flavor combination that adds to the natural flavors of the meat
Apple cider vinegar – brings some acidity to the meat so it’s not overwhelmingly rich
A bay leaf – helps round out the overall flavors of the meat. Adds a little something something that you can’t quite put your finger on, but you’d realize it if it wasn’t there.
If you love barbacoa beef but don’t want to wait 8 hours for the slow cooker to do it’s thing, then the Instant Pot method is the way to go. It will have everything ready to eat in under 2 hours with the same tender and flavorful results as the slow cooker method.
The Instant Pot has really taken the food blogging world by storm lately. If you’re not familiar with this kitchen gadget, it’s an electric pressure cooker that allows you to cook meats, soups and stews, and many other things in less than half the time that it would normally take. It’s a lifesaver for those looking to infuse a ton of flavor into food in a short amount of time. Here’s the Instant Pot {affiliate link} that I highly recommend!
How to make barbacoa in the Instant Pot
Use the Sauté setting on the Instant Pot to sear the meat on all sides. Once browned, press Cancel to turn off the heat.
Add the remaining ingredients to the Instant Pot, close the lid and seal the vent valve.
Press Manual, set to High Pressure and cook for 60 minutes.
Turn the vent valve to release pressure, open the lid and shred meat with a fork.
I hope you love this recipe as much as I do. Let me know in the comments below!
More recipes you’ll love
- Instant Pot Mexican Shredded Beef
- The BEST Mexican Carnitas Recipe
- Mexican Pork Chile Verde
- Chicken Pozole Verde
- Mexican Slow Cooker Chicken Carnitas
- Carne Asada Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 pounds boneless chuck roast
- salt and pepper, enough to coat meat
- 1 onion, quartered
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic (about 4 cloves)
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, diced
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup water
- for serving: cilantro, red onions, tortillas and lime wedges
Instructions
- Cut the chuck roast into large chunks, removing any excess fat. Generously season all sides of the meat with sea salt and black pepper.
- Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the meat and sear on all sides.
- Place the meat and all other ingredients in a slow cooker. Mix together to coat the meat with all the herbs and spices.
- Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 4-5 hours. When tender, shred the meat by pulling it apart with a fork. Taste and season with more salt as needed.
- Serve barbacoa in warm corn tortillas with chopped red onions, cilantro and lime juice.
Isabel’s Tips:
Nutrition Information
I just made this for a taco Saturday party and they went down brilliantly. I’d hoped for some leftovers but no such luck. Thanks for the easy to follow recipe! I’ll be making again for sure.
Hi Lee! Thank you so much, we are glad you enjoyed this recipe!
I’ve riffed off this recipe, not making it quite to Isabel’s. For example, I exchanged the chile chipotle for an ancho, a guajillo and 3 chile puya for someone who doesn’t like chipotle. It’s in the realm of chile colorado as I understand it. I’ve experimented with citrus from this recipe, with an eye towards pork. All of it is good (cooking some now).
Which is the genius of Mexican cooking. The same pantry, stocked with the same larder, suffices for an umbrella cuisine and all its regional and personal variants. Exchange this for that, more of one thing or less than another, ingredients in one chameleon form or another, you have a entirely different meal. That is the genius of Latin American cooking – regardless of what name individual dishes travel under. A bazillion names for largely the same thing.
What is “authentic?”
Take any abuela and her kitchen, Whether she always loved to cook, did it because she always had to but never wanted to (there’s a difference) – however always delicious… exquisite or unpalatable, that is authentic from the cook who produced it. I don’t view any restaurants as being “authentic.” I either like the restaurant’s food or I don’t.
For the most part, I look for recipes in Spanish language which don’t have the appearance of belonging to a corporate network. I recently found a blog from an Espanola (living in Spain) who is enthralled with “American food.” What is “American food” other than an adaptation of food styles that came from everywhere else? In some of her American recipes she exchanges some American ingredients for others much more readily available in Spain, perhaps some imported and normalized by Arabs who conquered medieval Spain in the 700’s. This is the condition of the world wide history of food. Look enough, and you can see that Mexican food in all its regional variations is a mixture of Spain and the indigenous.
As an example, we can look at the Canary Islander influence on what became Tex-Mex (lots of cumin, etc.), which among Tex-Mex descendants would become (unrecognizable to Texans) styles of chili being, in some variations, sweetened concoctions of all beans and no beef with all the heresies of tomato and bell pepper and maybe even ketchup. Meanwhile there is an old official Mexican government pronouncement bitterly denouncing Texas style chili as a fake version of Mexican food.
So, if someone wants “authentic barbacoa,” that person is free to don a tall crown woven sombrero, huaraches, white Mexican Indian costume circa 1900, dig a pit, put some creature’s head either in or above a pot among reduced coals, under a wickerwork of branches, leaves and maybe covered with dirt, and, after all that work, ultimately eat the cheeks, eyeballs and brains after bashing the skull open with an ax… I say… “Knock yourself out! Be authentic!” In the meantime, I’ll use a crockpot which may or may not involve cachetes, and certainly no ojos nor cesos while not caring the slightest what name the dish travels under.
Hi Albert! Thank you for your comment! We agree that authentic can take so many meanings and it’s all personal. We hope you enjoyed our recipe!
If I have a cow tongue to use for this recipe would the directions change at all?
Hi Jenny! We haven’t tried that so I’m not too sure. There are lots of other great food blogs that may have the exact recipe you’re looking for.
I love browsing this site. I need to hone my Mexican food cooking. Thanks Isabel
can u use this recipe for other meats? like pork butt? It looks delicious!
Hello! Yes, you can!
Fantastic!! Only change I made was substituting the vinegar with the juice of 1 lime
Wonderful recipe! We all enjoyed it and ate way too much. I will be making this again and again!
I made this tonight for an easy delicious meal in my Instant pot. I was too lazy to brown it. I threw the whole thing in the pot and seasoned as directed. My roast was just under 3lbs. I ended up cooking it on high pressure an additional 20 minutes and it shredded perfectly. Next time, ill have sour cream on hand. The flavors were delish! I served it with seasoned baby yellow skinned potatoes in my air fryer. Easy. Quick. Delish. AND SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Hello! I’m from the Netherlands so I have to translate this recipe – when you say ‘heat a large skillet’ does that mean you don’t use oil or butter to do so?
I haven’t tried this yet, but I will be making it soon! How could you go wrong with such simple ingredients? I live in New Mexico and in my city there aren’t very many restaurants I’m impressed with. We like to make homemade Mexican and this will be sure to please. Thank you for the recipe.:)
Thank you so much, Lisa! I hope you love it!
Hi! I want to try this recipe using my instapot but I have a question. It says to just add a 1/4 cup of water. Is that really all you need? It seems it would need a lot more. I’m new at using it so I wanted to make sure I’m doing it right. It sounds delicious so I’m excited to make it. Thank you!
Hi Patty! Good question. Though it might seem like a small amount, 1/4 cup of water is all you need in the Instant Pot for this recipe. Hope you enjoy! (I’ll retest this recipe to make sure 1/4 cup is enough, but it worked for me when I tested it before.)
Tried this recipe yesterday and it was soooo good! My boyfriend and I had to stop ourselves from eating the whole batch at once. We ate it as tacos with some habanero salsa and pickled onions. So much better than most tacos available in our area. Will definitely be making again!
I’m so happy to hear that you and your boyfriend loved it!
This is not barbacoa. It’s the cow’s tongue/cheek that gives barbacoa it’s unique flavor.
While we all are aware of the cow tongue and cheek, sometimes it just isn’t available, this gives another option to use to make Barbacoa, the flavors are there, your choice of meat to use, I’ve tried it with brisket, and it’s amazing, the ingredients that are used make for a tasty Barbacoa style taco..Why do people need to be so hateful? I’ll never know. This recipe is delicious and I’ve used different cuts of meat, each time it is still amazing..
I’m not far from you (Norman), Isabel, and I can’t usually find beef cheek anywhere! I almost tried this with a roast, however, I lucked up and ran across some cheek at a Sams club. Would you say you’re recipe would be good as is for beef cheek? Or would you make any changes?
Hi Steph, yep! I would cook it the same way.
And if you truly want to be authentic and technical about it, barbacoa by definition is a style of cooking(the word barbeque is actually derived from it) and traditionally goat was used…not beef head parts…so chill out and enjoy it…and she did state that originally meats from the cow’s head is used…this is just more accessible for most people to try…sheesh…some people…smh
Hi Isabel,
I made your barbacoa tonight and the family loved it! I made it in the instantpot and it was wonderful! I want to make your chicken posole recipe. I’m unable to find the chiles required for your version. Can you suggest some other chiles? I live in Washington state in a small farming community.
Thank you,
Debra Whitney
Hi Debra! It would depend on what types of chiles you have access to. Were you referring to the slow cooker chicken pose, or the chicken posole verde? We would be happy to help!